A Trap for Fools

by Amanda Cross

  Any more new facts? Only one more, which was more a lack of fact than a fact. Edna had told her that her friend in the psychology department had reported that no one had answered the ad about being on campus during the Thanksgiving break. Kate was not surprised: it would have been uncharacteristically lucky for such a person both to exist and to have seen and answered the ad. Probably no one would ever know what Adams did on that Saturday.

  Kate was just beginning to turn her thoughts to teaching, planning her classes, and pondering, not for the first time, how teaching was the center of the academic’s life, and yet the older the academic, the less teaching was the subject of current debate, both inner and outer. Somehow the demands upon the senior academic, whether political, scholarly, reading, or writing, occupied more time than considerations of how one would present, for example, the dilemma of the Princess of Cleves. Kate could remember her first years of teaching, when what she was going to say in each lecture dominated her every thought and plan. Was she less devoted to teaching? Probably, if absolute truth be told, but absolute truth is, she considered, as rare as it is evasive. With the tremendous emphasis in colleges and universities these days on publication and reputation national and international, teaching and the strange talents it called upon received less attention than lip service. Regretting this, she had nonetheless to admit that even for her, fervent teacher as she had always been, classroom occasions, like her marriage, were more the setting than the immediate concern of her life.

  Having reached this elevated conclusion, Kate was making for her study when the phone rang. It was the elder of the two policemen whose information she was, after the second death, allowed to share. “We’ve got something,” he announced to Kate.

  “The murderer?” she asked, hope elevating her pulse.

  “Maybe. But not identified. Someone has come forward in the black woman’s building who saw her with a man on the day she died.”

  “What took her so long? The witness, I mean.”

  “Him. He went away to visit his family on the day of the murder, and only heard about our asking for witnesses when he got back. As it happens, he was on the way out with his suitcases when he passed them coming into the elevator as he left it.”

  “Well, go on.” Kate said, “before I die of anticipation.”

  “It was a man. He, our witness, couldn’t see him very clearly; actually, he was shuffling out his suitcases and didn’t do more than grunt hello to Arabella. He knew her to say hello to, and hasn’t the faintest doubt it was her. The man with her was taller than her, which isn’t hard when you consider she wasn’t much over five feet. But our guy has the impression he was quite a bit taller. He was wearing a hat, and his collar was turned up, which our guy noticed because it wasn’t exactly a cold day. That’s all he noticed, except that the man was black.”

  “Black?” Kate couldn’t have sounded more astonished if the detective had said green.

  “It was a fast impression, but according to our guy, unmistakable. He admitted that when you see a black guy with a white woman or vice versa, you notice it. His unconscious, as he says, registered the fact that this guy was black.”

  “You think this bears out your theory of the murder having nothing to do with Adams’s death?” Kate asked in the most neutral tone she could muster.

  “I didn’t say that. I’m just giving you the facts, ma’am.”

  “For which I’m grateful,” Kate hastened to assure him.

  “We’ve got a sworn statement, and he’s willing to testify under oath. I don’t know exactly where this gets us. My partner and I are going to question some more people in that neighborhood, see if anyone saw this guy and maybe recognized him. I’ll be in touch.”

  Kate had not asked if the detectives thought the man could be Humphrey Edgerton. She didn’t even dare to ask if Humphrey Edgerton had an alibi for that time. Not that she believed for one moment that Humphrey had killed Arabella; but suppose he had visited her at her family home for some reason and been seen. They could only tell within several hours when Arabella had died, so once again, as with Adams, only vague alibis could be expected.

  With enormous effort Kate forced her thoughts back to the Duc of Nemours and the princess who so unaccountably refused to marry him. Since literature was her life, she felt considerable annoyance with herself for not being able at this particular moment to give her undivided attention to a love affair over four hundred years old. Kate was certain the princess had made the right decision, but her worry about Humphrey, who was palpably contemporary, kept intruding.

  When Kate had finished leading a discussion on the Princess of Cleves that went remarkably well (Kate had noticed that classes prepared under less than ideal conditions often surprised one by being particularly vibrant), she returned to her office to talk with Clemence Anthony, the wife of Andrew Adams, the son Kate had not met. Dr. Anthony, a psychoanalyst, had kept her own name, thus gaining Kate’s approval while adding to the ever growing cast of characters. I must stop thinking of this as a drama, Kate told herself, television, cinema, or theater. This is not drama; fiction perhaps, but not drama.

  This conclusion was sorely tried by the appearance and conversation of Dr. Clemence Anthony. Kate hardly knew what she had expected, but certainly not an authoritative Freudian who had a moment between meetings of a conference or committee and clearly considered Kate of insufficient importance to occupy one of her few free moments. Kate rarely took an instant dislike to a woman, a dislike based not on wildly differing views—as with Cecelia Adams, for example—but on pure chemical reaction. When you put oil and vinegar together they rush to opposite ends of the jar; Kate felt the same inclination in this room, nor did she cherish the assumption that she had been assigned the role of oil. Dr. Anthony spoke before Kate could.

  “I wonder if you understand the principles of acting out,” she began. “We all have murderous fantasies; fortunately, the superego interferes with our wishes in these matters. Probably all fathers at some time or other desire their daughters, consciously or not; few act out these desires.”

  “More act them out than was formerly believed, or than Freud was willing to admit,” Kate said, cursing herself. Little good could come from arguing the scriptures of psychoanalysis with a doctrinaire Freudian. You are acting out, Kate told herself; shut up! The admonition went unhonored. Kate’s superego was in serious trouble.

  “I didn’t come to argue the statistical incidence of incest,” Dr. Anthony announced. “I understand you had some questions you wanted to ask me about the death of my father-in-law. I mentioned the question of fantasy because I thought perhaps you would wish to consider it.” She offered a smile that Kate found about as convincing as that of an interrogator in a spy movie. There I go again, she said to herself, drama. And I’m not even being fair to this poor woman who has taken the time to see me.

  “I think you will find,” Dr. Anthony said, “that except for psychotic individuals with delusionary fantasies, acts of murder have their root in childhood events that have been repressed, or that are recalled only as screen memories. My thought was”—and this time her smile was genuine—“that consideration of these facts about the human psyche might make your job more manageable. Frankly, as Larry described it to me, it sounded rather formidable: your job of playing detective, that is.”

  Her smile may have been friendlier, Kate thought, but her opinion of Kate’s psyche was not one Kate cared to dwell on or inquire into. “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

  “Not at all,” Dr. Anthony said. “That’s what I’m here for. I am, however, rather pressed for time . . .”

  “I’ll try not to dawdle,” Kate said, keeping any sarcasm out of her tone only with the greatest effort. Kate took a deep breath.

  “I have met Professor Adams’s widow, Dr. Anthony,” Kate said, having wished, she now recognized, to call this woman Clem, “and I can understand
that she could not have been, well, exactly appealing to Adams’s sons and their wives.”

  “ ‘Not exactly appealing’ is nice,” Dr. Anthony said. “The understatement of the century. The woman is wholly without superego. She is the strongest argument I know to substantiate Freud’s view of the lack of moral development in women, tempted to say she is wholly without mind, if that did not suggest a deficiency of cleverness and cunning, which she certainly possesses.”

  “Canny, in fact,” Kate said, committing one of her very infrequent puns.

  Dr. Anthony smiled again; even better this time. My God, Kate thought, psychoanalyst or not, she’s just as nervous as I am. And she’s smart enough to have figured out that I’m unlikely to be bowled over by authority and an impressive vocabulary.

  “What did you think I’d be like, if you don’t mind my asking?” Kate said. “An academic version of the widow? Or perhaps a superannuated Girl Scout? Or did you imagine I was one of those who longed to contrive yet another solution to the mystery of Edwin Drood?”

  “Whatever I thought, coming on as ‘the bad mother’ was probably not the best idea, I do see that. Nonetheless, I am really rather pressed for time.”

  Kate sighed, with relief and anticipation. “Tell me, if you will, who you think was likely to have killed Professor Adams. I don’t mean the exact person, but the sort of person.”

  “You want my professional as opposed to my personal opinion?”

  “I’m interested in both, of course.”

  “My personal opinion is that none of his family did it. One could make a perfectly logical case for us, any one of us, deciding to tip him out of a window; after all, that woman was going to get every cent of his money before she was through and we can use money as well as the next person. Also, we were nearby, which is additionally suspicious because, in the ordinary course of events, we would have been far enough away to eliminate us as suspects altogether. I’m certain that none of us did it because I know where we all were on that Saturday, and it would have had to be a group effort—well, more than one of us, anyway. And even if one of us could have managed the psychic energy to perform such a deed, none of us could have done it collaboratively. Anyway, we didn’t do it. But I’ll admit to having contemplated killing the old bastard more than once, preferably by causing a heart attack by making him listen to my analysis of his symptoms. My point, as before, is that contemplation is not acting out.”

  “And your professional opinion?”

  “It was someone who was fundamentally threatened—cornered, in layman’s terms—and acting under extraordinary compulsion. That’s my analysis.”

  “Does it account for the second murder?”

  “Of the young black woman? We only heard of that recently. Obviously, it would be to my benefit to tell you that I’m sure that was committed by the same person, the second crime always being more amenable to conscious rationalization than the first. Obviously, if both crimes were by the same person, none of us could have done the second, nor, therefore, the first. But my real opinion is that they were done by different people, the first crime suggesting the second to the second criminal, who was probably psychotic.”

  “Can you tell me just a bit about your husband, and sister-in-law?” Kate asked. “I haven’t met either of them.”

  “Andy is a lot like Lawrence, whom you’ve met. They both reacted by similar personality formations to a morally strong, nurturing mother. Fortunately, the father though reprehensible, was neither absent nor weak. They are both secure men, which as Freud said about the morality of himself and his six children, is mysterious and difficult to explain. As to Kathy, she is a microbiologist and quite simply a nice, intelligent person. She has as little uncontrolled aggression as anyone I’ve met.”

  “Thank you. I don’t think there’s anything else. And I appreciate your giving me your views of the situation.” (Kate had almost said “sharing your views with me,” which would have carried a note of irony she wished to disguise. The damn woman might be an unreconstructed Freudian, but she was probably right all the same.)

  “Do you believe in penis envy?” Kate heard herself asking.

  “Of course,” Dr. Anthony said, as though she’d been asked if she believed in the historical Jesus. “That, and the fear of castration, are essential to the structure of the Oedipus complex. I take it you consider Freud’s theories to be in need of updating?” Dr. Anthony began to gather up her handbag and briefcase, but she was waiting for an answer.

  “I believe,” Kate said, rising to see Dr. Anthony out, “that when the Ancients got warnings about their children, they should have seen that infanticide was carried out. Without Paris, about whom Priam was warned, there might have been no excuse for the Trojan war; without Oedipus, Freud might not have had a story on which to hang his complex.”

  “That’s very amusing,” Dr. Anthony said. “I’m glad to have had the chance to meet you. I take it you don’t believe in infanticide generally.”

  “Certainly not,” Kate said, standing at the door as Dr. Anthony passed through. “But if infanticide is a policy of the culture, I have my own choice of victims.”

  Dr. Anthony shook Kate’s hand, and disappeared down the corridor. Kate, beckoning in a waiting student, had to admit that that had not been one of her better interviews. In fact, she had behaved quite badly. But she was not about to underestimate the value of Dr. Anthony’s professional opinion.

  When the last student had left, Kate called Edna Hoskins. “I’m just asking about something that I meant to ask right after Adams’s death,” Kate said, “and then it went out of my mind. What with the Middle East department so happily ensconced in Levy Hall, why are there no Jewish studies, or Hebrew studies, or whatever they ought to be called?”

  “Where have you been, Kate? The Jews didn’t actually get to the Middle East until after World War II.”

  “Really. I thought they got there with Moses, or without Moses but at his direction, and the Red Sea parted or something.”

  “As a nation, I mean, of course,” Edna said. “Besides, there’s a center for Jewish studies at the university, highly endowed and very notable.”

  “I see. Well, forgive my asking, but Professor Adams’s daughter-in-law talking about Freud somehow brought the question to my mind. My methods of association have always been hard to explain; it’s fortunate I never undertook psychoanalysis.”

  “Kate, do you think perhaps you ought to take a few days off? Fly off and meet Reed, wherever he is, and just relax.”

  “Reed is right here, as it happens, not in this grubby office, of course, but here in New York. He keeps chattering about pestles in vessels, so he’s even less help than you are. Not to say you two aren’t the most comforting people in the world.”

  But mentioning her grubby office reminded Kate of Adams’s more comfortable office, and of Reed’s suggestion that she go in there and sample the vibrations. It probably wouldn’t help, but she couldn’t see how it would hurt.

  Gathering up her papers and other belongings, Kate locked her office door, which reminded her that she had better go to security to get the key to Adams’s office, if it hadn’t already been reassigned to some unsuspecting but delighted professor; offices were at a premium in this urban university.

  Butler was glad to see her, or so Kate decided to believe. “Do you know the joke about the Catholic priest and the Lutheran minister?” he asked as Kate dropped into a chair. “The priest met the minister on their way to a train, and the minister convinced the priest there was no hurry because the priest’s watch was fast.” Here followed a good deal of dialogue, with and without brogue as suited the story. “When they got to the train,” Butler concluded, “it had already left. The priest looked at the minister, and pointed out that this was what came of believing in faith over works.” Kate laughed, more from exhaustion than humor, mostly from affection for Butler. “And wh
at can I do for you, Professor?” he asked.

  “Can I get into Adams’s office, or have they already given it over to its next occupant?”

  “Not quite yet,” Butler said, handing over the key. “You want me to go up there with you and make sure everything’s all right?”

  “I hope that won’t be necessary,” she said. “But if I don’t return the key in an hour, you might look on the pavement below.”

  Butler, who did not seem to regard this as even a passable joke, merely grunted as she left.

  Several people looked at Kate as she unlocked the door to Adams’s office, but they did not accost her. Entering the office, she immediately crossed over to the window and opened it. The room was stuffy and hot. Had it been that way when Adams entered it the Saturday after Thanksgiving? It was not unlikely; despite the university’s constant cries of impoverishment, they always overheated the buildings. She and PC had mentioned it. The heat might have lingered over Thanksgiving and the Friday after, on which Adams’s wife left for California and he had not been in his office.

  Kate sat down at the desk and looked about her at the rug, the drapes, the books on the shelf, Adams’s belongings still in the drawers. She opened one after another of the drawers, finding in them little of interest, nothing she had not seen before. She leaned back in the desk chair and put her feet up on the desk, as she sometimes did in her own office in an attempt to relax. She might have occupied the lounge chair with its own lamp in which, presumably, Adams sat while contemplating university politics or the state of the ancient Islamic world. Kate herself had never found it possible to settle her thoughts and cogitate within the confines of her office. For that, she always went home and put up her feet. But professors differed in this matter. Kate lowered her feet and moved over to the leather lounge chair, one of those that, merely a large chair until one leaned back in it, then extended its foot piece even as the back reclined. Kate leaned back. It was very comfortable. For a moment Kate leaned over the edge of the chair, looking for a button or memo that, had Kate been Angela Lansbury, would have suddenly revealed itself, despite all earlier police searches, caught in the foot piece of the lounger. There was nothing. I shall have to rely on vibrations, Kate thought, smiling at Reed. The flagon with the dragon. Who was the wonderful actress who had played that part?